While tactical marketing programmes are now commonplace in public libraries it is only recently that strategic marketing plans have become evident within library authorities. A quick glimpse at library and other websites in, for example, Australia, New Zealand, the USA, Scandinavia and the UK will reveal a wealth of advertising and promotional campaigns, some of which are isolated programmes but others which are clearly part of an unfolding marketing strategy and plan.

The author's experience of running marketing planning workshops for libraries, both as open workshops and as part of consultancy activity, is that there is much interest in planning marketing as a strategic exercise rather than simply a series of unconnected advertising and promotional activities. In addition, governments around the world are building marketing planning techniques into the way they approach the provision of public library services, and it is clear that local authorities are expected to commit more effort to marketing strategies and plans within such national frameworks.

This book is for those taking this journey from disconnected marketing programmes to integrated marketing plans. Many of the tools and techniques in this book are adapted from traditional private sector strategic and marketing planning approaches, but the reader should not feel that this is yet another case of business tools being foisted upon public services whose values and expected outcomes or impacts are not totally comparable with the expectations of the private sector. The author spent 10 years in public library authorities before becoming a freelance marketing consultant for the past 20 years working for over 50 large organizations (private and public sector) in 17 different countries. The public library planning context is, in many ways, very different from that of business, yet both seek profit – one seeks financial profit for shareholders; the other seeks profit as social capital, community cohesion or inclusion within community for its stakeholders. For both it is possible to ‘get lucky', but some degree of marketing planning is likely to help deliver the benefits they seek to acquire or distribute to shareholders or stakeholders.